W3C

Nobody's mentioned the real problem. These sites aren't W3C compliant. If they were, then any W3C compliant browser would work.

Grammur!

"The Commission put temporary 'reverse charge' measures in place at the end of last year but said that its changes to the VAT Directive were different to earlier proposed pilot schemes."

Here I am, doing your proof-reading again! ;-)

For the uneducated: in English we say "different from", avoiding American affectations such a "different to", "different than" or "different of".

Built In Monitor?

I'd just like to point out that the Mac Mini doesn't come with a built-in monitor. I paid £200 for my (used) Mac Mini, £110 for a half decent 19" monitor, £20 for a keyboard and £5 for a mouse. I probably don't show up in any statistics and I'm not alone. Take a look at how many Macs are selling on eBay. BTW I upgraded my first Mac Mini with a larger capacity HDD, memory and a Superdrive, plus a Firewire backup drive. Special tools required: 1 penknife and a X-head screwdriver.

Small and light

For my travelling I need a 12" laptop. It doesn't have to be thin but it needs to be lighter than the iBook. With a hand luggage weight limit of 5kg, 2.26kg (5lb) is too heavy. I need a 320GB Hard Drive and all the usual ports (Ethernet, USB2, Firewire) and wireless. Such a beast doesn't exist in Apple's line-up at any price, so I won't be "upgrading" any time soon. I love OSX but there's a distinct lack of choice in hardware.

No fruit?

Maybe they should recruit someone from Apple? They seem to be pretty good at innovation and making money.

Decisions decisions....

Oh, what a quandary! Should I buy "Snow Leopard" for my Mac or should I run Boot Camp and buy Windoze 7 then "upgrade" to XP? Hmm, such a difficult choice. Now let me think....

Murderous genes?

Murderer wipes out his own genes. It's an ill wind...

Toilet humour?

"...before linking to a (full-sized) bog post ..."

Better than a medium sized bog I guess.

Beat this

I've got it down to a fine art. I can de-shell a Mini in just 20 seconds with the bottle-opener blade of my pen knife. Heck, it takes me longer to swallow an oyster!

P.H. because she knows about swallowing.

Drinks are on me

I got into my Mac Mini with nothing more elegant than the bottle opener of my pen knife. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to refrain from emptying the bottle until the memory was fitted. Otherwise a case of double amnesia might have resulted!

Gimme a tower

Am I alone in yearning for the days of the old G4 tower with its 3 internal HDD bays, upgradeable CPU, replaceable optical (and Zip) drive and my own choice of monitor, keyboard, mouse etc.?

I love OSX but, if I wanted an integral monitor and almost zero upgrade possibilities, I'd buy a laptop.

Bring back the birch!

The mere threat of a caning had a most salutary effect on my spelling. "Bring it back", ses I.

Wind-up

I am a qualified engineer and I don't believe a Li-ion battery can explode like that - at least not without a lot of heat and smoke being emitted beforehand. Mark my words, this is a wind-up.

I'm 58

I'm 58 and have written many technical books. I've tried to write novels and failed. I take my hat off to Joanne Rowling. I enjoyed every one of her "Harry Potter" books. I guess that makes me an alzheimers victim like somebody else we know?

But I don't see what the quality of her writing has to do with the blatant plagiarism under discussion. Even if they were Noddy books, it's still plagiarism.

P.H. because she probably enjoyed having somebody read her the Harry Potter books.

Old ears

At my age, my hearing cuts off above 5kHz and 8kHz in left and right ears, respectively. Consequently, I can use £1.95 earphones and 64kb/s MP3 sounds just fine. :)

Audiophilia is a disease that is cured by age. ;-)

Hidden cameras

Of course the real terrorists use hidden cameras. The police should be arresting everyone who is not obviously taking a photo. Very suspicious.

(Mine's the camera disguise as a cuddly penguin.)

Sky own the customer

Danny Posted:-

[They say you should not upgrade your box? after 12 months its your box to do with what you want!! if they go down this route they should so what Virgin media and NTL did before the change and that is they own the box and not the customer!!]

Nah, Sky definitely "own the customer".

Darn! I forgot to recharge my wallet.

Darn! I forgot to recharge my wallet.

MacOS in 1987

"I pre-date you in your use of a Mac. I started in 1987. It's so long ago that I really do not remember the OS release number"

It was 6.0.4 when I got my first Mac-Plus in 1987. Ran in just 1MB of RAM.

Reliant on technology

I do feel that we are too reliant on technology now. In the old days, a damn good thrashing would have sorted out the daughter. She would have understood that continuing the relationship would lead to another very sore bottom. (Maybe I could have phrased that better.)

Paris, because she knows the full meaning of "sore bottom".

Wot, no Macs

So the US military don't use Apple Macs then?

Definitely grounds for prosecution! ;-)

It reminds me of when my eldest son was a teenager. I received a letter from his school announcing that he would attend detention for hacking the school computer system. I questioned him about it then wrote this brief reply:

Dear Headmaster,

I understand that you think my son should attend detention for accessing some teachers' private files by entering the word "password", when requested to do so, by the on-screen prompt "Please enter password".

I will be happy to oblige my son to attend your detention classes, provided that the teachers concerned attend a computer literacy course and learn how to password-protect their accounts. I await your confirmation.

(No confirmation was ever received and nothing more was said about detention!)

What's Safari

I don't use Safari. I just click on the little compass in the stripe at the bottom of my screen and I can Google. Oh, I have three messages in my Mail. Excuse me; The HSBC, Barclays and Natwest have all lost my account details and if I don't enter my password within ten seconds my best friend will die. Yeah, right! [delete] [delete] [delete]

Smaller, please

Let's cut the eye-candy crap. My wish list includes a lighter 12" (or smaller) iBook, that I can take on a 'plane, and a desktop Mac, larger than the 'Mini', which holds a standard 750GB Hard Drive, sensible graphics card, DVD burner and LOTS of ports.

Sad face because I know it won't happen.

Well, MY earnings are up!

My Adsense earnings have increased since Christmas. Google's loss is my gain. :)

Ban hoods

I wish they'd ban the wearing of hoods except when the weather warrants it!

I went into "The Officers Club" yesterday for a long-sleeve T shirt. Dammit, they didn't have a single one without a hood!

You don't need a "Harry Potter Cloak" - just a hood.

NHS Choose and Book

I don't give a damn about the technicalities. All I know is I can't book a hospital appointment because the "choose and book" site tells me: "We are sorry, but the web browser you are using is not compatible with the online Choose and Book service." Yeah, thanks, so which browser IS compatible? (It doesn't say. I've tried Safari and Firefox so far).

Try it yourself: www.chooseandbook.nhs.uk/patients

Click on: Book or change your appointment online now

There's a telephone number offered instead. Thanks a bunch. If I could use a telephone, I wouldn't need to see the audiologist! Thank God I don't have a life-threatening illness.

Sam